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July 11, 2009

In an interview with the Washington Times, Palin makes her most direct comments yet about Conservativism versus the Republican Party. In my humble opinion, it’s clear the GOP, unfortunately, is lost beyond the point of return. When you’re one year out of key campaigns to take back Congress in 2010 and Meghan McCain is The Oracle of the party, you know it’s over. If Tina Brown thought Ms. McCain’s willingness to be a Useful Idiot for liberals would undermine the conservative movement (and consequently Sarah Palin), she should take a serious and long look at what their attacks on Palin provoked: a stronger, more independent, more determined conservative leader and base.

Enter now Sarah Palin with very encouraging comments that lead one to believe that she is indeed planning to do what she must: build an independent conservative movement and take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties. Thanks liberals, for provoking Sarah into the national scene while vetting that family at the same time.

One thing I will say, the Washington Times with their headline for this exclusive interview reveal an anti-Palin stance. She is, don’t doubt, a threat to every existing political status quo. I hope the Washington Times and their editors realize, sooner than later, that the Palin movement is unstoppable and their credibility would be saved simply by reporting the news instead of becoming a GOP version of the NYT.EXCLUSIVE:Palin to stump for conservative Democrats

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP’s base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and “energy independence.”

“I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation,” …

“People are so tired of the partisan stuff — even my own son is not a Republican,” said Mrs. Palin, who stunned the political world earlier this month with her decision to step down as governor July 26 with 18 months left in her term.

Both her son, Track, 20, an enlisted soldier serving in Iraq, and her husband, Todd, are registered as “nonpartisan” in Alaska…

While the analysts and fellow politicians continue to debate the wisdom of her resignation decision, Mrs. Palin said she is eager to fight for her conservative beliefs when she leaves office.

The governor, 45, said she shared former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s view that Republicans, now trailing Democrats and independents in registration in many states, should back moderate-to-conservative Democrats in congressional districts and states where Republicans stand almost no chance of winning.

The object would be to build a majority coalition that reflects what polls suggest is the current center-right tilt of the U.S. electorate as a whole.

July 10, 2009

Rope-a-dope is a boxing fighting style used most famously by Muhammad Ali (who coined the term) in the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman.

The rope-a-dope is performed by a boxer assuming a protected stance. Sports fans can still recall Ali's classic pose, lying against the ropes, and allowing his opponent to endlessly pummel him, in the hope that the opponent will become tired and make mistakes which he would exploit in a counter attack. The opponent would often totally exhaust himself, mistakenly believing that this next wild blow would finally send Ali to the canvas.

Ali most famously used the technique in Kinshasa, Zaire, when he knocked out 25 year old George Foreman and regained the World Heavyweight Title. The fight is remembered as "The Rumble in the Jungle".

After dazzling Foreman with his trademark quickness in the first rounds, Ali fell back against the ropes, and waved Foreman to come get him. Protecting his head, Ali let Foreman pound away at his ribs and his gut. "At about the seventh round, I had him beaten, I knew I had him." Foreman recounted after the fight. "Then he fell on my side and whispered, ‘Is that all you got George?’ I knew something strange was happening in my life especially because that was all I had." In the eight round Ali came off the ropes and unleashed a fury of punches against his exhausted opponent. Mighty George Foreman went down.

"I did it," Ali boasted after the fight. "I told you he was nothing but did you listen? I told you I was going to jab him in the corners, I told you I was going to take all his shots. I told you he had no skill. I told you he didn't like to be punched."

Sally Quinn, for some unknown reason heading the On Faith section of the Washington Post (Akin to having Perez Hilton covering the NFL Draft) recently wrote a column criticizing Sarah Palin's parenting skills. You may hold your nose and read it here. It concludes with this:

It might seem exploitative of Trig to some who are so cynical about her that they believe everything she does is for self-aggrandizement. So what? But if she really did it she could change the our culture and the way our world views those with disabilities. She would not only be helping millions of people around the world, but her own child as well.

Leaving her job because it's better for "the state" or to pursue her interest in energy or national security is laughable.

Sarah Palin should live up to her self-proclaimed Christian "family values" and do what she says is the moral thing to do: put her family first and help those who cannot help themselves.

Then, of course, there's David Letterman who continues to attack Sarah Palin despite the presidential campaign having ended eight months ago. This is the same David Letterman who has yet to direct his team of writers to construct a substantive joke about President Obama.

Here's a request to all her critics... Keep it coming!!

Sally Quinn, please throw a weekly left jab to Sarah's jaw.

Vanity Fair, keep punching in the clinches.

David Letterman, keep taunting her. Keep getting uncomfortable laughs with one-liners aimed at her looks and her family.

Maureen Dowd, keep throwing the roundhouse.

Huffington Post, uppercut, uppercut, uppercut.

What you all may discover is that the American Public will reach a saturation point. Your constant criticism will stike a discordant note, and the Sarah Palin juggernaut may well pick up even more speed, and with renewed energy, head toward your bunkers. A presidential win? Who knows. But hers will be the voice to energize Conservative voters in 2010.

America loves an underdog. There is nothing so compelling as a comeback story, and the Palin-trashers are helping to write it.

Jim Henry, 66, a Parkinson's patient, told the inquiry: "I had to wait six months to see a specialist for my initial diagnosis, but received no information about Parkinson's at that or any subsequent appointment."At once stage, my neurologist went on sick leave for more than a year, with no notification or replacement service."

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Parkinson's Disease found a postcode lottery in services across Britain and said there were too few specialist nurses to treat the estimated 120,000 sufferers in Britain.

They also warned that health professionals, including GPs, had a "poor understanding" of the disease.

Diagnosis was delayed or initially missed in up to half of patients, the inquiry heard.Ministers and NHS managers are to blame for "appalling gaps" in services and a "lack of leadership of neurological services at national and local level" the report found.It warns that there are too few nurse specialists to treat patients, particularly in Wales and Northern Ireland. (More...)

NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer's drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease.

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer.

Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma.

Speaking to the American Medical Association last month, President Obama waxed enthusiastic about countries that "spend less" than the U.S. on health care. He's right that many countries do, but what he doesn't want to explain is how they ration care to do it.

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

President Barack Obama speaks about health care during a town hall meeting at Northern Virginia Community College last Wednesday.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: "Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere."

What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs -- including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 -- that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year's ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE's clinical and public health director, noted that "there is a limited pot of money," that the drugs were of "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost," and the money might be better spent elsewhere. (More...)

July 8, 2009

Is it just paranoia that The Left seems to control the media to serve its own agenda? Do you believe that the Mainstream Media in the UK is somehow superior to ours in the USA? Forget it.

Labour Party (actually, Marxist Party) sleazeball (Leader of the House of Commons) Harriet Harman is appearing on Question Time, a weekly BBC show. This is how former Conservative Party Leader Ian Duncan Smith, voicing opposition to the governing Labour Party's policies, is treated on a "political question and answer" program. Remember, the BBC is a governmental entity paid for by taxpayer license fees.

July 7, 2009

I am sitting down tonight and writing a long, rambling and profane letter to my legislators. They are going to learn of my plan to return the United States to a position of prestige and abundance. My plan? Give California away. Well, it's a little more complicated than that.

The USA is an oppressive nation. We can all agree on that. It's hard to find a group that hasn't been belittled and dominated by religious gun-toting capitalist white males and their ilk. I propose a new and independent nation called VICTIM LAND formed in what is now California. Existing homes will be given to anybody who has, in the past, identified himself or herself or itself as a victim. That's it. Case closed.

All victims get to live and be part of a community that will understand their struggles against oppression. Transgenders will surf with midgets. Feminists will frequent the lush state park system shoulder to shoulder with Islamic fundamentalists and hippies, environmentalists and illegal aliens, marxists and racial minorities. Theirs will be a land of plenty, the ultimate land of fairness, a bastion of understanding whose bright florescent beacon of love and equality will shine bright (but efficiently) as an example to all the world.

Oh, and when VICTIM LAND has welcomed its whining masses yearning to breathe free, its tired, its poor, and its complainers... THEN, we'll build a giant goddam wall and SECURE OUR BORDERS.VICTIM LAND's immigration plan will be better and much more equitable and generous than America's mean-spirited approach. All will be welcome to share in the abundance. Trial lawyers and doctors will all work pro bono. Every one of Victim Land's plentiful jobs will be a union job. Food and medical care and child care and speech will all be free. Welfare will be generous. And there will be no more religious domination of the society. Talk of God will be forbidden everywhere, except in the mosques.

Anyone with a grievance can travel free to Berkeley (or Santa Monica or wherever they choose as their nation's capital) to protest anything while carrying free government-supplied and ergonomically correct signs. Citizens will scurry from "green villages" to "organic co-ops" in solar-powered bicycles and wind-powered land ferries. Everybody, for their own safety, will be mandated to wear seat belts, helmets, and big foamy underwear from morning to night. And, of course, no citizen will ever be offended. That promise will be in their constitution.This is an idea whose time has come. On this blog's right hand column you'll find our poster and script you can insert into your blog to tell the world that it's finally time for the USA to play fair.

The gulf between America's national power and Russia's weakness is glaring.

One figure should dispel any delusions of grandeur that Russia might harbour in the wake of President Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with President Barack Obama in Moscow. By 2050, Russia will have only 14 million more people than Uganda, a country less than two per cent of its size. A parlous health system, widespread alcoholism and the shocking fact that Russian women have more abortions than live births mean that the population of the world's largest nation falls by about 800,000 a year. There are 142 million Russians today, but there will be only 107 million in 2050, according to United Nations forecasts, while Uganda's population will treble to 93 million.

Far from recovering its status as a great nation, or even extending its global influence like China or India, Russia is locked in long-term decline. We take no pleasure in pointing this out, for the achievements of the Russian people are exceptional: their literature is justifiably renowned and their stubborn heroism was indispensable to the defeat of Hitler. Yet this only adds to the tragic aspect of a country with so many grounds for national pride seeking to posture as a false superpower. By leading Mr Obama through the mirrored halls of the Kremlin, Mr Medvedev was consciously reviving the image of Cold War summitry when the leaders of the two superpowers met on roughly equal terms to decide the future of the world. "Such powerful states as Russia and America have special responsibility for everything that is happening on this planet," the Russian president declared.

These vainglorious words came from a man who is not even master of his own house. Few doubt that Russia's most powerful politician is Mr Medvedev's old boss: Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, who may be planning to return as president at the next election in 2012. Mr Obama generously went along with the illusion of equality, but the gulf between America's national power and Russian weakness is glaring. Despite all Mr Putin's efforts, Russia's total defence budget is still only 11 per cent of America's. Meanwhile, the economy of the United States is14 times bigger than Russia's.

There are other fantasies, notably the pretence that Russia has anything other than the appearance of democratic freedom or has embraced capitalist reforms. This is a nation where independent journalists risk murder. Mr Medvedev's administration is also willing to use force against smaller neighbours: the shameful invasion of Georgia last August must not be forgotten and will, one hopes, be raised at the G8 summit this week. Russia's leaders should remember that nothing is more dangerous than to delude oneself.

July 6, 2009

"Nickie, what the hellza matta witch you? Youse a walkin aroun like a stump!"

What he meant was I had been displaying all the signs of childhood depression. My mother called them the "gloomies". Folks, I've got the gloomies. I have great difficulty sleeping.

I fear that Barack Hussein Obama intends to lose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By leaving our forces in Iraq with less than a full complement of troops, and by almost encouraging sectarian infighting within the Iraqi government, he gets to shrug his shoulders when it all crumbles, and declare "It was a fool's errand to begin with. The previous administration was wrong to ever have put us into this situation."

Image the wasted American and British and Iraqi lives. Imagine the wasted resources. Imagine the crushed spirits of Iraqis hoping for some relief from endless religious and political turmoil.

No problem. The Left will have won their ideological battle with the Bush administration and proudly declared defeat.

But what of Afghanistan? How could a defeat in Afghanistan benefit the Obama mob? Do you recall Rahm Emanual's statement following the election?

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

A failure in Afghanistan would allow the Democrats to totally change the USA's military presence worldwide including dramatic nuclear disarmament. Their reasoning would be that to lead the world in peaceful rebirth and alternative energy, we must stop being the policeman/bully of the planet.Who in God's name thinks we have a gnat's ass chance of winning in Afghanistan?That's why we went to Iraq. What military force wants their success to hinge on a clear and decisive victory in Afghanistan? Who in their right mind would prefer to stage conventional military operations and engage the quicksilver-like enemy in and around the Shok valley?

The Soviets learned their lesson, and their humiliating defeat did much to hasten the collapse of the Kremlin.

This war in Afghanistan will be slow and painful, with American and British body bags returning to home soil at a heartbreakingly steady pace. The Democrats know this. The MSM will report our atrocities and failures while romanticizing the enemy. American morale in battle and at home will plummet. Middle America will turn away from the painful images from the Network news desks. The typical cast of bleeding hearts (students, artists, Marxists, gays, lesbians, downtrodden minorities, and wimmin) will march through American cities and demand the return of their beloved boys and girls in uniform.

You don't think this could ever happen? Drag out some old YouTube videos of CBS TV Vietnam coverage.

The nightmare that keeps me awake nights is that Obama may be deliberately sacrificing American lives in a cynical Chicago-style political power grab.

July 5, 2009

Was her resignation, on a quiet Friday afternoon with America's MSM engrossed in the Michael Jackson fiasco, a giant blunder or a brilliant political move?

I've got a feeling that she felt like a sitting duck in Alaska. She was being swamped by Democrat legal armies. Legal fees have been astronomical. She's won every case, but the lawsuits and "public interest" investigations would certainly keep her tied up indefinitely.

I think she's fixin' to fight back. She's heading south to the lower 48. Will she run for the senate? Will she become a Fox News personality with a no-holds-barred pulpit for kicking back at the MSM? We all know what payback is.

I hope this is true. The Right needs a healthy set of huevos and, at this moment, Sarah seems to be the only Conservative sporting any. I could be wrong, I know. Any thoughts?

Thanks to my otherwise wacky Uncle Woodrow, the Woodsterman (Warning! He usually works blue) for the lead on this video. He has been banned from all family gatherings since Easter 1991, but he's finally come through. You may not agree with every point, but it sure helps to be reminded of this stuff.

RUPERT MURDOCH’s patience with Gordon Brown is wearing thin. His British papers have called repeatedly for an early general election – to the PM’s mounting alarm. Brown was so upset, he was on “non-speakers” with the Sun at the start of June, only relenting to attend Rebekah Wade’s wedding.

This coincided with the Dirty Digger’s visit to Britain. In America, his new pride and joy, the Wall Street Journal, has all but given up on Brown. It commissioned two pieces to coincide with the weekend of its proprietor’s trip to these shores – a hymn of praise to David Cameron, “A Tory Star Rises” (12 June), followed by an op-ed piece headlined “Gordon Brown Helped Cause the Crisis” (15 June). It concluded: “Choosing a new leader with integrity and managerial competence is the party’s best chance to win greater respect from voters.”

The Digger’s trip to Britain also coincided with the Digital Britain report from sub-Birtian technocrat Lord Carter. Murdoch is outraged at proposals for the TV licence fee to be “top-sliced” – not because he wants the Beeb’s cash to be protected, but because he doesn’t want to see rivals such as ITV and Channel 4 chomping their top-slices while his BSkyB goes hungry. If the BBC hands over some cash, Murdoch believes, it should be returned to licence-fee payers.

His British editors are never more like the “His Master’s Voice” dog than when the boss is actually in town and breathing down their necks.

Sure enough, the News of the World said on 14 June that cutting the BBC’s income was a good idea, “but absolutely not to bail out commercial TV. Savings should go right back to licence payers.” Three days later a Times leader called for “a smaller BBC” and complained that Carter had funked “the opportunity to advocate returning some of the licence fee.” Woof, woof!

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